1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a circuit configured to generate binary data from multi-valued data, and also to a recording apparatus including the circuit.
2. Description of the Related Art
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 10-81025 discusses a technique for receiving multi-valued data representing a gradation level from a host apparatus, and generating binary data from the multi-valued data by referring to a table of dot placement patterns.
A printer equipped with a full line type recording head prints check patterns for checking a preliminary discharge operation and for checking actual discharge between image regions to be recorded based on multi-valued data during a printing operation. Therefore, the printer needs to have a data generation circuit for generating not only image data for the printing operation but also a preliminary discharge pattern and a discharge check pattern. As the number of recording elements in the recording head increased, it is required that the preliminary discharge pattern and the discharge check pattern are generated more quickly. On the other hand, there is a demand for suppression of increase in a circuit size and complexity of a data processing circuit.